The Westerby Inheritance (6 page)

Jane no longer felt she had any energy left to cope with her stepsisters’ manners, and let them do as they pleased. Her visits to Philadelphia were becoming a rare luxury. Mrs. Syms always seemed to put in an appearance for the sole purpose of freezing Jane out. Jane wondered why Philadelphia did not send her a note to inform her of the times when Mrs. Syms was likely to be absent from the vicarage. She could not guess that the astute Philadelphia was using Jane’s visits to try to force Mrs. Syms to send her, Philadelphia, to London for the Little Season. Mrs. Syms viewed her daughter’s friendship with the increasingly shabby and brown Lady Jane with dismay. Philadelphia was well aware of this and was using the situation for her own ends.

The air was hot and still. Jane turned a bend in the lane, where the road dipped down under a thick canopy of arched trees, but even in this shade it was suffocatingly hot and still.

Suddenly she thought she heard a furtive scuttle behind her and swung round.

Nothing.

Nothing but the hot stillness of the empty lane.

She walked on a few paces. There was a sudden crackling of twigs, and she whipped round again. Mr. Josiah Plumb came lurching out of the undergrowth at the side of the road.

With surprising speed for so heavy a man, he was upon her before she had time to gather her wits. One beefy arm pinioned her against him, and one beefy red hand clamped over her mouth.

“Now, Jane,” he muttered thickly, “we’ll see if we can have you this way. You’ll be right glad to marry me when this is over.”

He stank of brandy and sweat. Jane was terrified. She struggled, trying to get her mouth free to scream for help. But he was too strong for her and too drunk to care about what he was doing.

“Let her go!” A clear feminine voice sounded down the lane.

Mr. Plumb abruptly released his hold on Jane and stared.

Hetty, Marchioness of Westerby, stood some yards off down the road, her gun leveled straight at the farmer.

Hetty was lavishly powdered and patched and painted, having returned from a rare visit to a neighboring village with her husband. After leaving the drunken Marquess snoring in bed, she had decided to walk down the lane to meet Jane on her way home, taking her gun with her in case she saw anything for the pot. Only Hetty could bag game in the middle of a hot afternoon in August.

Mr. Plumb recovered from his initial fright. “’Ere now, my lady,” he grinned. “You’d better let me ’ave that there piece.” He began to move toward her.

“Back!” said Hetty coolly.

Mr. Plumb sniggered horribly and walked boldly forward. There was a sharp report, and a ball zipped through his three-cornered hat.

In a dumb, shocked way, he removed his hat from his head and stared at the hole, while the Marchioness of Westerby calmly reloaded her gun.

“I’m agoin,’” he yelled as Hetty raised the gun again. Another ball drummed into the dust at his feet.

It was too much for Mr. Plumb. With a great, unprintable oath, he turned on his heel and fled in the direction of the village.

White and shaken, Jane walked toward Hetty. But it was Hetty who burst into tears, not Jane. “It’s all my fault,” sobbed Hetty, leaning on her gun while her tears formed a sort of paste with the powder on her face, making her look like a miserable clown. “I don’t know the ways o’ the quality, and that’s a fact, Jane. How come I was to guess that letting Plumb propose would lower you? Your pa ought to have told me, but he’s that drunk half the time, his wits are addled.”

Jane put her arms round her tall stepmother and hugged her closely. “If you were a lady with fine manners, Hetty,” she said earnestly, “we would have had no food to eat this winter, and Mr. Plumb would have had his way. Please don’t cry, Hetty.”

“You’re ashamed of me. I disgust you!” wailed Hetty, sobbing harder.

Jane bit her lip. This she knew to be true. At least, it
had
been true. But she felt as if all her contempt and dislike of Hetty’s coarse ways had fled in her present burst of affection and gratitude.

“I think you are a fine woman, Hetty,” she said, hugging her stepmother harder, gun and all. “I think I had better learn to use a gun too. Come, you shall teach me how to use a gun, and I shall teach you how to embroider, and that way we shall begin to share our skills.”

“You mean it?” Hetty turned a shining face on her, her mercurial spirits as elated as they had been depressed a bare moment ago.

“Yes, I mean it,” said Jane earnestly. And, putting her arm around her tall stepmother’s waist, she led her toward home.

But Hetty would not train Jane to use a rifle. Jane was too small and would be in danger of rendering herself deaf or dislocating her shoulder, at the very least. Hetty produced a fine pair of pistols and said she would teach Jane to use a pistol instead. “It’s about the only things apart from his sword that your pa h’an’t pawned,” she explained.

Throughout the following long, hot days, Hetty taught Jane how to aim and fire until she declared in delight that Jane’s skill had surpassed that of her teacher.

Although she was desperately uninterested in acquiring any skill with the needle, Hetty patiently tried to learn, enjoying this new closeness with her stepdaughter.

And then the letter from Lady Comfrey arrived. It was bald and to the point. Jane was invited to London, on the understanding that, if she did not “suit,” she would be returned to the country forthwith.

All Jane’s ambitions came flooding back. Feverishly, she began to darn and mend what clothes she had. Lady Comfrey was to send a carriage for her in a bare two days’ time.

Betty and Sally, her stepsisters, were frankly envious and begged her to send them sugarplums from “Lunnon.”

The Marquess was too drunk to understand or care.

Hetty felt as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. It was different for Sally and Betty. They came from the same coarse mold as herself and were better prepared to cope with the rougher side of life. But she had hated to see the dainty Jane suffer. Now she, Hetty, could be happy.

With this thought, she pushed her husband’s head aside—it was lying on the kitchen table—and poured herself a tankard of Lisbon to celebrate, and glugged it down noisily.

Her eyes, peering over the rim of the tankard, met those of Jane just before Jane quickly dropped her own. But not before Hetty had seen that old familiar look of disgust and contempt.

Hetty gave a heavy sigh. She felt she had lost Jane forever. Jane would meet all the fine lords and ladies in London and would compare their grand manners with those of her common stepmother. She was suddenly impatient for Jane’s leavetaking.

Despite Jane’s fears to the contrary, Lady Comfrey’s carriage arrived at the appointed time, complete with wigged coachman, two footmen on the back strap, and two burly outriders. Jane’s very small trunk was strapped to the roof, and she turned to say good-bye to Hetty and her stepsisters. The Marquess was sleeping off his latest bout and hardly seemed to be aware that his daughter was leaving.

Hetty gave Jane a warm hug, her eyes filling with tears. Little Betty began to cry, because she was a soft-hearted creature and fond of her stepsister. Sally tossed her dark mane of hair, so like her mother’s, and begged Jane not to forget and send sugarplums. The Syms family had arrived in full force, Mrs. Syms unbending slightly since Jane was going to an aristocratic address.

Jane felt guilty at feeling so cheerful. With the boundless optimism of youth, she considered the matter of restoring her father’s estates as having been almost achieved. In London, all would be elegance and good taste.

The combined efforts of the Syms and Westerby households had managed to turn out Lady Jane Lovelace in full fashion. Her gown had a flowered silk bodice and cream-colored skirts trimmed with lace. Light blue shoulder knots, an amber necklace, brown Swedish gloves, a flowered silk belt of green and gray and yellow with a bow at the side, and a brown straw hat with flowers of green and yellow completed her ensemble. Jane felt very strange and new in all her finery. She wore her hair unpowdered, and—wonder of wonders!—Hetty had managed to find her a long walking cane decorated with gay ribbons. Carefully managing the enormous hoop of her gown, Jane was assisted into the coach.

“I shall see you soon,” whispered Philadelphia. “You must ask Lady Comfrey to invite me too!”

The coachman cracked his whip. “God go with you,” cried Mr. Syms, waving his hat.

Hetty stood silent, one hand on the shoulder of each of her daughters. Large tears were running unchecked down her brown face.

“Don’t cry!” called Jane. But she did not want to lean out of the coach window for fear of demeaning herself in the eyes of the servants, and so her last remark went unheard.

Already father and stepfamily were fading and fading and growing smaller and smaller in Jane’s mind, until, as the carriage swung out onto the London road, they had disappeared altogether. London took up the whole of her horizon.

It was only a few hours’ drive to London, so Jane had a peaceful respite in which to dream of that glittering capital of elegance and wit, of spires and fine buildings, drawing rooms and parks.

The reality was like nothing she had ever imagined.

Nothing had prepared her for the noise.

In the first place, shopkeepers had apprentices outside their shops, bawling lustily, “Rally up, ladies! Buy! Buy! Buy!” Add to that the people who had skills to sell, bawling out offers to mend chairs, grind knives, solder pots, buy rags or kitchen stuff, rabbit skins or rusty swords, exchange old clothes or wigs, mend old china, cut wires—this excruciating, rasping operation was done in the open—or copper casks.

Then there were the sellers of things to eat and drink—saloop, barley broth, rice, milk, frumenty. Shrewsbury cakes, eggs, lily-white vinegar, hot peascods, rabbits, pullets, gingerbread, oysters, honey, cherry ripe, Chaney oranges, hot codlins, pippins, fruit of all kinds, fish, taffity tarts, fresh water, tripe, tansy, greens, mustard, salt, gray pease, watercresses, shrimps, rosemary, lavender, milk, and elder buds. Or things for domestic use—lace, ribbons, almanacks, ink, small coal, sealing wax, wood to cleave, earthenware, spigots, combs, buckles, leghorns, pewter pots, brooms in exchange for old shoes, things of horn, Holland socks, woollen socks and wrappers, brimstone matches, flint and steel, shoelaces, scissors, and straps—the thousand and one things not sold in shops but peddled on the streets, each salesman trying to outcry the other.

Then there was the bear-ward with his animal and his drum and his dogs, the sweep shouting from the housetop, the ballad singer bawling in the road, the tumbler and the dancing girl adding to the cacophony with fife and drum.

There were the wagons that went ponderously grinding over the rough stones on the road; the carts rumbled, the brewers’ sledges growled, the chariot carrying Jane through all this melee rattled abominably, and the drivers in the streets quarreled and cursed and fought.

A trumpeter was calling the rabble to see a six-legged calf; a fresh-faced country youth was screaming in the filth of the kennel where he had been thrown by a bully with a two-yard-long sword who had told him, “Turn out there, you country putt!”

The pedestrians on the pavements were in constant danger of being flattened by burly and aged chairmen who carried their sedans at a fantastic rate, or blinded by barbers who blew powder onto wigs outside their shops with great energy and strength of lung.

Jane huddled in the corner of the carriage, deafened by the tremendous roar from the streets; frightened by wild, staring faces outside the carriage window; frightened by the shifting, moving, howling, ever-changing rabble. She did not look out of the carriage window again until she realized that the noises of the street had abruptly died away. The carriage was swinging round into Huggets Square.

She stiffly alighted, with the help of the footmen, and followed them up the shallow steps, not quite knowing how to handle her beribboned cane, which was as long as Jane was short. A massive butler with the dignity of an archdeacon opened the door and ushered Jane into the almost tangible silence of Number Ten. “I will h’ascertain whether my lady is at ’ome,” he intoned, showing Jane into the morning room and closing the door behind her.

Jane looked about her curiously. The room was sparsely, if elegantly furnished, with delicate little chairs and a handsome writing desk in one corner. A round satinwood table in the center of the room was laid for tea, with a teapoy—a tea chest on a small tripod table—standing at attention, its four lacquered canisters and mixing bowls gleaming with blues and reds and golds.

The door opened, and Lady Comfrey entered. Both ladies surveyed each other, each trying to hide her disappointment. Jane had secretly been hoping for a substitute mother, Lady Comfrey for a beauty.

Jane saw what seemed, to her young eyes, a very old lady who was painted and patched and powdered like a grotesque. Lady Comfrey’s youthful, striped satin gown had a low decolletage which cried out for a fichu, since it revealed rather too much of her scrawny bosom. Her eyes were very dark, almost black, and seemed to be the only thing about her that were alive.

Lady Comfrey saw a very small girl, little more than a child, with a pinched, elfin face and oddly slanting brows.

“Well,” said Lady Comfrey, deciding to make the best of things, “I am sure you would like a dish of Bohea after your journey. Pray be seated and tell me how your papa goes on.”

“He—” began Jane.

“It is a pity he gambled away his estates,” said Lady Comfrey, who was not in the way of holding conversations with anyone other than herself. “It is always the ones who are unlucky at cards who are the most taken with the pastime, although it has come to my ears that there is a certain Lord Charles Welbourne who is accounted a demon with the cards. ’Tis said he has sold his soul to Satan. Would you consider that at all the case?”

“I—”

“Neither do I. And so I told Bella. Bella is my maid, and a monstrous fund of gossip. I know it is not at all the thing to
chat
to one’s servants, but then there is no one else precisely. Such a pity about your father’s marriage. The final straw! Vulgar, common, ranting woman.”